Two things you never want to hear in the same sentence: “hub flange failure” and “Turn 8 at Willow Springs.” That’s what happened to Andrew Kidd in his Trackspeed Engineering Mazda Miata at the NASA SoCal event in May.
Kidd had just passed the apex at Turn 8 at more than 100 mph, and as he began to track out to the left, the right rear hub flange let go, sending him on one wild ride. He reacted quicker than a mongoose on meth, but there was no saving this one. Some 800 degrees of violent rotation later, Kidd’s car came to rest and was stranded in probably one of the most dangerous places you can think of.
The good news is that he was OK. The safety crew hauled the car on a flat bed back to his pits. Kidd replaced everything that broke, including the wheel, which was destroyed when the lower control arm chewed up the inside of it, and was back to racing that same day.
